All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.

About Joseph Joubert

Joseph Joubertwas a French moralist and essayist, remembered today largely for his Pensees (Thoughts), which were published posthumously.

More about the author

More quotes from Joseph Joubert

There was a time when the world acted on books; now books act on the world.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Never cut what you can untie.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Innocence is always unsuspicious.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

The mind conceives with pain, but it brings forth with delight.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Misery is almost always the result of thinking.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Only choose in marriage a man whom you would choose as a friend if he were a woman.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

It is easy to understand God as long as you don’t try to explain him.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

All are born to observe order, but few are born to establish it.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Who ever has no fixed opinions has no constant feelings.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

The passions of the young are vices in the old.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

The Bible remained for me a book of books, still divine – but divine in the sense that all great books are divine which teach men how to live righteously.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Justice is the truth in action.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Children need models rather than critics.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

God is the place where I do not remember the rest.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Logic works, metaphysics contemplates.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Ask the young. They know everything.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

To teach is to learn twice.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Imagination is the eye of the soul.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Politeness is the flower of humanity.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Be charitable and indulge to everyone, but thyself.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Space is the stature of God.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Without the spiritual world the material world is a disheartening enigma.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Pleasures are always children, pains always have wrinkles.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist

Love and fear. Everything the father of a family says must inspire one or the other.

Joseph Joubert

French moralist and essayist